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16 June 2011, 16:06

LulzSec takes down the CIA web site

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LulzSec Hacker group LulzSec, which already has more than 150,000 followers on Twitter, has claimed responsibility for taking down the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) web site. In a post yesterday evening (15 June), the hackers said "Tango down – cia.gov – for the lulz." It is not yet clear how LulzSec took down the site, however, the group likely used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

US blog Gawker says that it believes that LulzSec attacked the CIA web site to impress a single Twitter user who goes by "Quadrapodacone". It seems the two got into an online "Twitter flame war, after Quadrapodacone mocked Lulzsec for taking on only 'soft targets' like video game companies and PBS". Gawker notes that the hacker group has since deleted its half of the online conversation.

The attack on the CIA web site by LulzSec is just one of many recent hacks for which the group is said to have been responsible. Earlier this week they hacked the US Senate's servers and released a config file from the legislative chamber's web site. LulzSec also penetrated the network of games developer Bethesda Softworks, where it succeeded in stealing some data, and later infiltrated the network of pornography provider pron.com. The group has even setup a hotline which users can call to request hacks.

Previous hacks include attacks on the web sites and networks of, for example, Sony BMG and Sony Pictures, as well as broadcasting group PBS, Nintendo, and FBI liaison and security firm InfraGard; the latter hack led to the release of confidential data belonging to Unveillance which gave insight into the methods used by US cyber war experts.

At the time of writing, the CIA web site is back online. An official statement about the site's down time has yet to be made by the CIA.

(crve)

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